Missouri executes Christopher Collings for sexually assaulting and strangling 9-year-old girl in 2007

BONNE TERRE, Missouri. A Missouri man was executed Tuesday for sexually assaulting and killing a 9-year-old girl and then dumping her body in a pit outside a small rural town.

Christopher CollingsThe 49-year-old was friends with the family of the victim, fourth-grader Rowan Ford — so much so that he lived with the family for several months before the girl’s death in November 2007. Sometimes he helped Rowan with her homework. She knew him as “Uncle Chris.”

Collings was executed by injection of a single dose of pentobarbital and pronounced dead at 6:10 p.m. CET at the Bonne Terre State Prison in Missouri. The execution was the 23rd in the United States this year and the fourth in Missouri. In 2024, only Alabama with six and Texas with five executed more.

Collings’ fate was sealed Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal and Republican Gov. Mike Parson denied a pardon.

“Right or wrong, I accept this situation as it is,” Collings said in a written closing statement. “I’m sorry for everyone I hurt in this life. I hope you can finish the job and move on.” He added, “I hope to see you in heaven one day.”

At Collings’ trial, teachers described Rowan as a hard-working and happy student who loved Barbie and whose room was painted pink.

Collings told authorities he had been drinking heavily and smoking marijuana with Rowan’s stepfather, David Spears, and another man in the hours before Rowan was attacked, according to court records. Collings said he lifted the child, who was still sleeping, from her bed and took her to the camper where he lived, where he assaulted her.

Collings planned to drive Rowan home, getting her out of the camper facing away from him so she wouldn’t be able to recognize him, he said in his confession. But when moonlight lit up the darkness, Rowan was able to see Collings, he told police. He said he “freaked out,” grabbed a rope from a nearby pickup truck, and strangled her.

Rowan’s mother, Colleen Munson, came home from work at 9 a.m. on November 3, 2007, and was alarmed when she couldn’t find Rowan, and went around the neighborhood looking for her. Court records say Spears insisted Rowan was at a friend’s house. But when Rowan didn’t return home by lunchtime, his mother called the police, leading to a massive search.

Collings, Spears and a third man became the focus of police attention because they were the last people seen at Rowan’s home. Collings confessed to the crime and told police that after killing Rowan, he took the body to the pit. He burned the rope used in the attack, along with the clothes he was wearing and a bloody mattress, prosecutors said.

Court documents and clemency petitions allege Spears is also involved in the crimes. A transcript of Spears’ statement to police, included in the clemency petition, said Spears told police Collings handed him the cord and Spears killed Rowan.

“I choked her with it. I understand that she is not there. She … she’s really gone,” Spears said, according to the transcript. Meanwhile, court documents say it was Spears who led authorities to the sinkhole where the body was found.

But Spears was allowed to plead to lesser charges. It was not clear why. Prosecutors in the first trial did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Spears spent more than seven years in prison before being released in 2015. No list of his phones could be found.

The clemency petition said Collings suffered from a brain abnormality that caused “functional deficits in awareness, judgment and deliberation, behavior, appropriate social inhibition, and emotional regulation.” It was also noted that he was often abused and sexually abused as a child.

“The result is a damaged person with no guidance on how to grow into a full-fledged adult,” the petition reads.

The clemency petition and Supreme Court appeal cast doubt on the credibility of a key law enforcement witness in Collings’ trial, a police chief from a nearby town who had four voluntary discharges during his time in the military. Collings’ attorney, Jeremy Weiss, argued that failure to disclose details of the criminal history during the trial violated Collings’ right to due process.

“His credibility was really at the heart of the whole case against Mr. Collings,” Weiss said in an interview.

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That victim’s mother’s last name was corrected to Munson, not Spears.